I think eye-projection is currently the only significant way forward from tablets and smartphones. Microsoft et al love to occasionally parade around this slick VFX produced future where everything is some sort of curved touch screen, but they’re still talking about just slapping screens on everything and calling it “future” — by controlling the light close to the source of vision you’re eliminating an entire world of overhead. With that type of technology physical devices almost fade away completely.

Input is still a hurdle of course; I wonder if Magic Leap has any tricks in store beyond voice commands.

“The brain is very neuroplastic — and there is no doubt that near-eye stereoscopic 3-D systems have the potential to cause neurologic change,” he said. “There is a history (for optics geeks) of issues that near-eye stereoscopic 3-D may cause — but this has always been very limited use and small populations (like the military).”

after playing around with a OR for a bit I can see that this technology (if they can pull it off) would be vastly superior, assuming the glasses can preform well in brightly lit places. I love the OR and think it is completely awesome, but it can be a pain if multiple people use the unit. We’ve been playing around with scanning peoples heads in 3D to get more precise measurements for calibration files, but that would have to be preformed for everyone who wanted to use the system, and it would still need to be adjusted manually for the perfect viewing location.

the one problem I could perceive with the Magic Leap technology is freaking the fuck out when virtual stuff pops up in peripheral vision. Like imagine an advertising company that needed to push a horror movie…

I haven’t quite understood, but I assume that they will need to use some kind of structured-light or orther 3D imaging in order to get a sense of the space in front of the user? (If only because otherwise how would they know where to put that elephant?)

In that case, it seems that gesture recognition would be pretty simple.

And if you combine the two, it wouldn’t be hard to have arbitrary input screens appear in the air or the table in front of you as needed.

“What? No, I’m not fucking crazy! I’m just trying to get this tiny elephant off my hand so I can send a text! Look, I shake and shake and he’s just stuck there like a damn barnacle! Why would I be the crazy one??? Clearly it’s this tiny fucking elephant who’s crazy!”

Maybe my IT security classes are starting to come back to me, because what strikes me are the potential risks of a device that shines light directly into your eyes, that’s controlled by a networked mobile computing device.

A virtual retinal display (VRD), also known as a retinal scan display (RSD) or retinal projector (RP), is a display technology that draws a raster display (like a television) directly onto the retina of the eye. The user sees what appears to be a conventional display floating in space in front of them. In the past similar systems have been made by projecting a defocused image directly in front of the user's eye on a small "screen", normally in the form of large glasses. The user focused their e...